Fullpower News

Here at Fullpower Labs, we are thinking about last year’s Berkeley earthquake and have been doing some geographical distribution analysis. That earthquake hit right in the middle of our night, 2:39 am to be precise. Many of Sleeptracker’s users (www.sleeptracker.com) in Northern California were affected.

Here’s a graphical representation using the Sleeptracker AI-powered predictive analytics to show how that developed.

Sleep technology grew at the 2019 CES show and Fullpower’s Sleeptracker® technology platform is the clear leader. Completely non-invasive and non-intrusive, Sleeptracker monitor requires nothing to wear, nothing to charge, and it makes any bed a smart-bed with accurate monitoring to 90+ pct of PSG for two simultaneous sleepers. The Sleeptracker platform is cloud-based and AI-powered with a powerful bolt-on cloud-to-cloud API for rapid integration (learn more about our technology at Fullpower.com). Alexa users have additional features, for example, simply ask Alexa using the new skill: “Alexa, ask Sleeptracker how I slept last night?” With much more under development to be announced soon, the Sleeptracker® Monitor is leading the sleep AI machine learning industry.

Magid: Devices Measure Quantity, Quality of Sleep

Apple’s Beddit comes in second to the Sleeptracker by Beautyrest, which has better features for couples.

One of the criticisms of the Apple Watch is that there is no native sleep monitoring, but that’s not keeping Apple from wanting to measure your sleep. Instead, the consumer electronics giant last year acquired Beddit, a sleep detection device that’s composed of a plastic strip that you put under your bottom sheet, to measure how you sleep. Apple just released the newest version of Beddit (3.5) with an accompanying iPhone app.

As is often the case with new Apple product categories, Apple is not the first to market a sleep detection device that connects to the bed. And, as is sometimes the case, the Apple product isn’t best of the breed. I installed the new Beddit device to compare with the Sleeptracker by Beautyrest monitor that I’ve been using for about a year and prefer the Sleeptracker.

Beddit is available at Apple stores or at Apple.com for $149.95. Beautyrest Sleeptracker lists for $199, but Amazon is currently selling it for $116.14 while Sears.com now has it for only $69.99.

The Apple and Beautyrest devices have a few things in common, but they differ in important ways. First, the Sleeptracker works with both Android and iPhone while Beddit only works with iPhone. Second, a single Sleeptracker product works with two sleepers so, if you share your bed, you and your partner can both get sleep data. You would have to buy and install two Beddit products to measure two sleepers. With Beddit, you need to have the phone in the room, while Sleeptracker connects to your home Wi-Fi network and can work independently of the phone, once it’s set up. During setup, the Sleeptracker app asks if a pet sleeps on your bed to make sure the pet doesn’t affect your readings.

Also, Sleeptracker uploads your data to powerful cloud-based servers, according to Philippe Kahn, CEO of Fullpower, the Santa Cruz company that developed the product for Beautyrest. Kahn said that the data is anonymously compared with data from thousands of other users to give people a basis of comparison. He said that the company adheres to strict European privacy guidelines in all markets, including the U.S.

Having more information about your health – including sleep data – is a good thing

Another big difference is that the Sleeptracker sensors go under the mattress instead of on top of it. I could actually feel the Beddit strip as I was lying in bed. The Sleeptracker sensors are undetectable, except maybe to the protagonist of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Princess and the Pea.”

Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist. To read the complete story, please visit the original article in the Mercury News.

This endangered cheetah is wearing a Fullpower AI-pod for research purposes. The pod and its associated infrastructure are an AI-powered sensor-fusion edge cloud solution that learns about the Cheetah’s behavior. The AI-pod is small, waterproof, and rugged. We are in the process of learning a lot about cheetah behavior. For example: “When do Cheetahs really sleep?” or “When to Cheetahs really hunt?” This picture was taken at the Cheetah Conservation Fund based out of Namibia.

Unlocking the secrets to a better night’s sleep

Asleep. We spend about a third of our lives in a state of slumber. Increasingly documented as a key component of human well-being, sleep enables us to recover and regenerate physically and mentally. Getting too little of it or having poor night’s sleep creates an imbalance that has knock-on effects on cognitive ability, mood, and general performance. For example, the coaches and medical staff at Hintsa Performance emphasize sleep as one of the 6 key components of success for high-level athletes and business people, in what is described as the Circle of Better Life. In The Sleep Revolution, Arianna Huffington claims, “We are in the midst of a sleep deprivation crisis,” and details the consequences society will face socially and economically if we do not adequately address our sleep habits.

Yet, for all the various tips and tricks proposed to improve sleep it remains a largely obscure state that many of us rarely reflect upon – unless you have a bad night’s sleep. Some of us are more aware of the importance of sleep. Severe sleep disorders afflict as much as 16.6% of the population worldwide, if not more, according to a 2012 Warwick University study. There are a number of challenges in researching sleep disorders; however, new technologies are paving the way for improved means of gaining valuable insights into sleep.

Three innovative areas that ETH Zurich currently investigates could hold the answers to optimizing sleep.

Tracking Brain Activity

The SleepLoop project is developing a device in the form of a headband that measures and analyzes brain waves, subsequently playing a matching sound to stimulate deeper sleep. One of the major impediments to traditional sleep studies is the bulky equipment required to measure the subject, often requiring them to sleep in the lab. SleepLoop’s wearable technology optimizes data collection providing quality results that are faster, cheaper, and affords greater comfort to human subjects taking part in the study. This technology could potentially deliver a cure to sleep disorders without the need for drug therapies and may have applications in the prevention of certain brain diseases.

Don’t Hold Your Breath

Scientists in ETH Zurich’s Organic Chemistry Lab have increased 5-fold the sensitivity of their sleep measuring devices using secondary electrospray ionisation (SESI). “This sensitivity is sufficient for our SESI devices to be used for breath analysis in medicine,” says Professor Pablo Sinues. One of the applications Sinues and his team are investigating is the analysis of exhaled breath in order to diagnose sleep apnea. Their future projects include looking at how to simplify instruments to deploy in clinics and doctors’ offices.

Rock-a-bye Baby

Originally created to study the optimal rocking movements for falling asleep, researchers have reengineered the Somnomat bed to study snoring. In both cases, the Sensory-Motor Systems Lab envisions an autonomous robotic platform capable of monitoring, detecting, and self-adjusting as the user sleeps. By customizing the bed to an individual’s preferred conditions, the bed will be able to guarantee a good night’s sleep.

Numbers Don’t Lie

Complimentary to all of these research areas is the work led by ETH Zurich alumnus Philippe Kahn at the California-based company Fullpower Technologies. Drawing on their knowledge of big data, machine learning, and AI, they have developed the Sleeptracker® platform to analyze over 250 million of nights of sleep from millions of individuals worldwide. Their results notably show that there is a genetic predisposition to being a morning or an evening person. According to Kahn, “The challenge is that our modern society tends to force everyone to a schedule inherited from the early days of the industrial revolution. This in turn means that there is about 25% of the population that may not perform optimally on a recommended modern schedule.”

It turns out that in addition to the science of sleep providing solutions to sleepless nights, we may also need to adapt some of our societal parameters to offer more flexibility to account for different sleeping habits and preferences.

Zion Market Research has published a new report that examines the Sensor Fusion Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecasts 2016–2024, which forecasts that newer technology advancements driving the market globally.

The report covers forecast and analysis for the Sensor Fusion Market on a global and regional level as well as country level. Global Sensor Fusion Market research study focuses on growth opportunities, industry trends, key drivers and restraints across the globe. The Sensor Fusion Market report also analyzes the historical data as well as the future outlook of the market for better understanding the dynamics and trends prevalent in the market.

The overview or summary part of this report describes the definition of Sensor Fusion Market as well as its uses, applications, product portfolios, pipeline analysis and the other industry perspective. The Sensor Fusion Market also discusses a couple of facets, for example, major key drivers, growth obstacles, and future predictions that have been found in the global market.

The Sensor Fusion Market research report also includes, a major key segment with the help of which discusses the market growth, regional aspects, sub-segment breakdown, etc., can be measured. The Sensor Fusion Market is also segmented on the basis of its type, uses, applications and regional and country level. The Sensor Fusion Market research report covers an in-depth market segmentation that includes all market aspects containing this intelligence report that could help to gain market share in the respective segments across regions.

A complete 360-degree analysis is provided in the report on growth factors, regional and country level, major companies’ portfolio, developmental strategies, and future opportunities from the companies in the historical period.

The report evaluates the positive and the negative factors that are influencing the growth of the market

The report also covers in-depth market size, share, trends, growth analysis on the basis of its applications and key drivers.

The market numbers have been calculated using top-down and the bottom-up approaches

The report also includes quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Sensor Fusion Market.

Major market players profile and their business strategies.

In the next subsequent chapters, the report describes the competitive landscape, market analysis, key growth factors, future opportunities and its aspects. The different measures considered while calculating the Sensor Fusion Market prospects near future.

A team of analysts at Zion Market Research has analyzed the Sensor Fusion Market key drivers, constraints, challenges and emerging opportunities in all the industry verticals which will specify the emerging scope of the market in end-user industries. The future impact key growth drivers and restraints based on the different average model are included in the report to the better understanding of clients with clear decision-making insights.

Zion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristic, cutting-edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from cardinal industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the client’s needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to us—after all—if you do well, a little of the light shines on us.

Figure 1 Self-explanatory: NY parties the most, and surprise, Las Vegas the least. The explanation is simple: That’s because Sleeptracker users in Vegas actually work in Vegas and are not visiting to party. In our little piece of paradise in Santa Cruz, SurfCity, we tend to go to bed early to catch the surf in the morning before work.

Figure 2 is about heart rate and the effects of alcohol on sleep. After studying millions of nights of sleep we noticed that alcohol pumps up heart rates significantly. We can see this here when on NYE, people tend to drink more. And guess what: The younger crowd drinks much more and heart rate gets significantly affected.

In a nutshell, the Sleeptracker® Monitor is about small day-to-day non-invasive improvements for Ms. and Mr. Everyone using the principles of CBM (Cognitive Behavioral Modification) that add-up over time to improved sleep in the comfort of one’s home. Polysomnography (PSG) is about wearing a battery of sensors and monitors for diagnosing potentially life-threatening sleep disorders such as severe apnea in one or more sessions in a sleep lab. Both PSG and the Sleeptracker® Monitor are complementary and “compatible.” Big data and AI are what drive the innovation in the Sleeptracker® Monitor.

The Sleeptracker system is focused on Cognitive Behavioral Modification and understanding what simple practical matters impact our daily sleep. The idea is to improve sleep for Ms. and Mr. Everyone with small adaptations suggested by AI working with big data sets. With millions of users and millions of nights of sleep to draw from, the Sleeptracker AI engine helps to give us immediately actionable personal insights as to what impacts a night of sleep. The AI engine observes short, medium, and long-term personal daily sleep patterns and compares the Sleeptracker user to hundreds of thousands of people “just like me” to provide actionable personal insights. Through this process, the Sleeptracker user can experience and quantify for themselves the effects of making measured changes to their sleep routine. The data show key impacts to our sleep quality are directly tied to daily exercise, proximity of meals to bed-time, alcohol consumption and stress. These behaviors which directly affect sleep are handled privately, confidentially and securely for the purpose of understanding and further improving using the principles of CBM. Throughout the night, and completely non-invasively, the Sleeptracker® Monitor continuously monitors breathing rate, heart rate, motion, wake-up and out-of-bed events. In time, monitoring will expand to include air quality, ambient noise and temperature of the sleeping environment to provide greater insight into environmental impacts to one’s sleep. For example, sleeping with a partner, pets on the bed and the impact of children on sleep are important factors which the Sleeptracker AI-engine takes into account. With CBM, the AI-powered coaching agent suggests simple actionable tips that help improve sleep for Ms. and Mr. Everyone, a little at a time.

By contrast, Polysomnography (PSG) is focused in today’s medical world in identifying candidates for CPAP machines. That’s very important and probably the most actionable matter that is derived from PSG study as sleep apnea is a potentially life-threatening condition. One must remember, the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle (HUP) shows the measuring apparatus of an experiment impacts the outcome of the experiment. Anyone who has participated in a polysomnography study knows how invasive PSG can be to sleep. In fact, often the PSG requires patients be monitored multiple nights to obtain a clear understanding of their tendency to apnea due to the invasive nature of the equipment and restlessness from not sleeping in one’s home environment. Most agree that an important part of sleep hygiene is a consistent schedule and conducive sleep environment. Diagnosing apnea and the prescription of CPAP machines is a multibillion-dollar business and of course is indispensable to those diagnosed. The Sleeptracker® Monitor is meant to be a complimentary product to PSG and not meant to diagnose, but to provide insight into sleep patterns and the measured changes one can make to improve one’s sleep routine.

Correlation of the Sleeptracker® Monitor to Polysomnography is accomplished through a fully operational onsite PSG lab staffed by a licensed sleep specialist. While the focus is on CBM rather than diagnosing apnea, this ongoing calibration ensures the Sleeptracker® Monitor delivers greater than 90% accuracy compared to invasive sleep monitoring. Accuracy is focused on time to fall asleep, sleep efficiency, wake-up events, respiration rates, heart rates and REM sleep.

We’d be happy to have you try the Fullpower sleep lab for a complete free and confidential sleep study if you’d like. Here is an article by Fortune magazine that is two years old and describes our sleep lab and how we use it: http://fortune.com/2015/06/29/sleep-data/

In conclusion, as the data sets grow with Fullpower’s advanced AI methodologies, we learn more and more about our sleep and how the quality of our sleep compares to “people just like me” in a non-invasive sleep environment. Using CBM, we make small modifications that help significantly improve our sleep and health over time. For severe sleep disorders, PSG and a trained MD are key for prescribing a CPAP machine and treating the sleep disorders. For everything else, the Sleeptracker® Monitor offers valuable insight and actionable coaching into one’s sleep routine for a better night’s sleep.

Twenty years ago Sunday, Philippe and Sonya Kahn spent 18 hours at a hospital in Santa Cruz, waiting for their baby Sophie to be born. Like nearly all expectant fathers, Philippe Kahn planned to take a picture of the new baby but, instead of waiting till he got home to distribute the photo to friends online, he wanted to do it directly from the hospital. But that was in 1997 when there were no camera phones. So he invented one.

Kahn, who previously founded Borland International and Starfish Software, had already configured a home server to store images, automatically notify friends about new images and send them a link so they could view them via the web. But there was no way to get the pictures to the server directly from a camera.

Philippe Kahn took the first ever cell phone picture of his then-newborn daughter Sophie in Santa Cruz County.

Kahn had a Casio QV-10, the first consumer-grade digital camera with an LCD display that, he said, “made pixelated but nice 320 by 240 pictures.” He also had a Motorola StarTAC “flip” phone, so during Sonia’s 18 hours of labor, he thought about finding a way to connect the two so he could upload a picture of the baby directly from the hospital.

“It was clear that I had a hardware problem. Short of taking the phone apart I needed to interface with the phone,” he said in an interview.

He also needed to connect a laptop to control the camera/phone connection. Phones then couldn’t connect to either laptops or cameras but – as he pondered the problem – he remembered he had a StarTAC speaker phone kit in his car which, of course, could connect to the phone. With his wife’s blessing, he “literally ran down to my car, took out the whole speaker phone kit and started working frantically at creating a software/firmware/hardware interface” that enabled him to send the pictures from the laptop, which was connected to both the camera and the phone.

As luck would have it, he finished this Rube Goldberg device just in time for the arrival of Sophie and snapped what was not only Sophie’s first picture, but the first picture taken by what eventually evolved into the camera phone.

Kahn’s server sent links to this image to friends, family and colleagues and he started hearing from people who were impressed at how quickly he got this picture from the hospital to their screens, which made him realize he had a potential product.

“Immediately it became clear that we needed a CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) sensor and a micro controller unit integrated in phones. So we built these prototypes that were interfaced with the exact software/server/service-infrastructure,” he said.

With a prototype in hand, Kahn tried to convince the CEOs of Kodak and Polaroid to create an integrated phone and camera “but none of them could imagine that the phone would be the integrating device.” He said that they “hired consultants, market pundits and they all collectively came to the conclusion that phones would be focused on voice and that cameras would become wireless.” Both Kodak and Polaroid later went bankrupt.

“They totally missed the paradigm shift,” said Kahn.

Unable to find a partner in the U.S., Kahn took his idea to Japan but had no success with big players like NTT Docomo. But he did find interest from a small carrier called J-Phone, which, in 1999 partnered with Sharp along with Kahn’s company LightSurf, to design a “Picture-Mail phone.” In 2002 Kahn’s company worked with Sprint and Casio on the first U.S. camera phone.

Sprint loaned me one of those first phones to review. I picked it up at their office on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and, after leaving the office, I found a parking ticket on my car. Convinced that it was an unjust ticket, I used the phone to document my surroundings to prove why I shouldn’t have to pay the fine. The Los Angeles Parking Citations Bureau disagreed and I didn’t bother to appeal, but it nevertheless convinced me of the power of always having a camera in your pocket.

Today, I routinely use my camera phone to help me remember where I park my car. I take pictures of luggage tags, receipts and the price tags of items I’m thinking of buying. Of course, like most people, I also use my phone to photograph people, animals and scenery. Truth be told, the pictures I take with my smartphone often look just as good as the ones I take with my $1,000 camera.

Both my kids were born before Kahn built that camera phone so I wasn’t able to use a phone to transmit pictures of my kids’ births in near real time. But millions of fathers have since instantly shared pictures of their newborns to loved ones far and near. Happy 20th birthday to both the camera phone and Sophie Kahn.